Posted
by
jamie
on Tuesday November 23, 1999 @08:10AM
from the community-jest dept.

billybob submitted it first: "If you're looking for a great way to waste some time, check out
Microsoft Monopoly,
the online board game!" It's GPLed and you can submit your own jokes. I like the quick'n'easy lawsuit form.

Well, myself being the Monopoly freak I am, I've gotta comment that it really ain't Monopoly... else I woulda won way more rounds with hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues. ($1300 and $1200? Maybe not)

But, hey, that's one hell of a hilarious site. Now it's giving me ideas for a new Monopoly board...:-)

I thought that it was particularly interesting that they devoted an entire section to explaing how someone was eventually going to bring a lawsuit to the table.

The funny thing about lawsuits is that large corporations are using them as leverage. Say I have a big-time company that makes OS' (what, me? pointing fingers? NEVER!), and I find a website that, although it is clearly labeled a parody, I find slanderous. Now, I am big and burly and have lots of money. The owners of this site are most likely either poor or not well-off enough to be able to support themselves easily while fending me and my macho corporation off.

So I sue. Even though I am obviously in the wrong, 90% of the time, the po' wittle website (say that five times fast!) will cave in simply because they cannot pay the incredibly high lawyer's fees.

I hope everyone has seen the page where they present a fill-in-the-blanks demand letter from MS and Hasbro lawyers. It's just as funny as the "game" itself, however I wouldn't be surprised if they end up getting a real demand letter.

IANAL, they are clearly using several trademarks there. They should be OK on the copyright end, because it's a clear parody, but trademark-related issues might get thorny... --

I've spent years now looking at this 'internet', and was beginning to despair of anything useful ever appearing. Sure, it's got nudies galore, pictures of planets and even slashdot, but this -- this! is what the internet is all about.

Of course, being the conscientious slashdotter that I am, I bookmarked it, looked long enough to comment on it, and left it for a week so that all the other little dotties can have a look. Next week I can have a game in peace. Do likewise!

Slashdot effect is beginning to set in. One problem might be that they are so upbeat about the whole thing, they'll get their faces smashed in. That is what happens to people who are upbeat when they're being interrogated by the mob, and does anyone see any difference between Micro$oft and the Mafia?

Haha, I love the parody on the site... one particular thing I liked about the board was the one that said GNU Hurd would have a stampede soon. Cool, I always thought Hurd would be the next big thing after Linux. (Now where is Linux on that board??? I probably missed it... looks like it's suffering from the Slashdot effect, so I'm not going to add to it.:-))

(Offtopic) IMNSHO a microkernel approach to an OS (ie. Hurd) is better than a monolithic approach, like the traditional Unix kernel. Of course, with dynamically loadable modules in Linux, the distinction is somewhat blurry... From a technical standpoint, I like Hurd's microkernel design better. (This is not intended to be flamebait!) That's why I think Hurd would be the next big thing after Linux. "The stampede shall come!"

Enjoyed your MS Monopoly site. Check out my version of the MS Monopoly game I created about a year ago, plus the other MS humor at:

http://jokewallpaper.com/msdoj.htm

I also can relate to your "I am So Mad I Could Sue" page. My parody/satire site is just a little over four years old. In that time I have been contacted by lawyers from Intel (Pentagram 666 processor, dropped from site), Apple (Think different, still on site), Netscape (modified, lawyer letter on site), Eli Lilly (prozac-seltzer, dropped from site), Pine Tree Car Air Freshnr (computer air fresheners, dropped from site), and UPS (modified, lawyer letter on site)

The points I make in the UPS letter are valid. You are covered by "fair use parody" in the use of the Microsoft trademark, but perhaps not covered in the use of the Hasbro trademark. You definitely are making a social commentary using the Microsoft logo, but using the Monopoly game trademark is not so clear cut.

Please remember all legal advice in the preceding paragraph comes from a humor writer, not an attorney.

Have Fun, Steve Kremer JokeWallpaper.com

BTW, if some of the "Letter to a Netscape Lawyer" looks familier, segfault and userfreindly used part of it for a lawyer letter prank last April Fools Day.

How about we mirror the hell out of this? If M/$ or Parker Bros. wants to shut it off, lets make it as difficult and costly as possible.

I see 200+ mirrors on sites in as many countries as possible. If we start now, we might be able to keep it available.

I would follow rde's suggestion and bookmark the site for a later game, but in these litigious times, one has to mirror the entire content of any site that might be the littlest bit offensive to *anyone*. Especially big corporations.:) Or at least take a peek before it goes away...

It seems the only way to keep the web free is a little peaceful civil disobedience.

It took me about fifteen minutes just to download the "board" page with all the images. Click on one of the squares, and it takes a minute for the Javascript window to pop up.

Granted, the site is probably being Slashdotted. Still, it's a bit embarassing to see the Apache, PHP3 and MySQL logos displayed so prominently when the site evidently can't handle the load. Someone at Microsoft is probably thinking that they're getting the last laugh here.

Dude, I'm sure that this site is being slashdotted into oblivion. And I'm damn proud to see the Apache, PHP3, and MySQL logos displayed...I was genuinely surprised as hell to see the site appear at all.

The/. effect is able to bring most sites down to their knees unless they have big $$$ invested in hardware...I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that there isn't a server farm of Quad Xeons backing this site. And yet still it stands, proudly pressing on against the seemingly endless tide of the/. onslaught. I salute it!

The "poor little website owners" are often up for a fight anyway - they're angry, they're determined, they know they're in the right and they don't want to see justice taken for a ride. The most extreme example would be the McLibel defendents, who faced personal bankrupcy to defend themselves in court.

So don't threaten them - threaten someone upstream from them, like the ISP. The ISP doesn't care about the rights and wrongs of the issue - they're looking at the money. And the money says that you have very little to gain by standing by your customer and everything to lose - the best commercial proposition is simply to drop customers as soon as anyone who can spell "lawsuit" writes to you, regardless of whether they'd have a case, and regardless of who the Good Guys might be.

This simple inequality is probably a bigger risk to free speech online than any CDA style legislation...--

Micros~1 might want to get rid of it, but I suspect Parker Brothers (Now Hasbro, I think) will simply pretend it doesn't exist, after the way they got burned on the "Anti-Monopoly" fiasco - you can check that out at http://www.antimonopoly.com if you want the full story.

It seems like almost every week I hear about someone having to cave into some company's intimidating lawyers just because, whether they were right or wrong, they could not afford legal fees.

On one hand, it doesn't bother me to bill someone $75 per hour for software work. Likewise, when a doctor wants money of that magnitude (or higher), it doesn't bother me to pay. But on the other hand, the very idea of figuring out how to find a lawyer that I would want to hire, and then.. ugh... paying them is so distasteful that I would do just about anything (e.g. cave in) to avoid it.

And yet we're in a litigous society where one should pretty much expect to have to deal with lawyers -- or at least legal procedures -- at some times in our lives. Maybe this is a topic that should be covered in every person's basic education (e.g. mid school or high school). Why do we bother to teach kids

How a bill becomes a law

How the courts can sometimes zap a law

To memorize and impressively recite lines from MacBeth

How Newton computed rotational inertia

How Millikan measured charge

How Mendel bred plants

How to speak a foreign language

How to paint a flower with watercolors

How to play a sport

but we don't teach them what to do when they get slapped with a harrassment lawsuit? I'm not too happy when I think about all hours I wasted learning about English kings hanging, drawing, and quartering people who spoke treason, but no one told me what to do if I get a scary letter with a bunch of "esquires" in the letterhead.

I'm not saying get rid of the legal profession (the law is far too complex at this time -- we need specialists until it gets better (and that is never going to happen)) but maybe most adults really should be able to take care of themselves when "simple" things are involved. See a doctor if you have chest pains, but get out the ol' pocket knife if you have a hangnail. Why can't it be the same in law? People should only have to hire lawyers when something obscure or complicated is involved.

We all deal with life-threatening danger every day, but common sense and a little training makes it almost safe. Crossing the street, for example. But the risks in a courtroom are almost as high, and no amount of common sense will protect you. It's so bizarre and so intimidating that we pretty much have to hire experts to handle it for us. And that's the reason most people have to back down instead of fighting, even when they know they would win. That sucks and it needs fixing.

People should only have to hire lawyers when something obscure or complicated is involved.

Unfortunately, they make things obscure and complicated on putpose. It helps the lawyers, because then they get more work. It helps large corporations, because all that complexity allows for numerous loopholes they can squeeze through to smack us normal people or escape liability. And the lawmakers benefit because they get paid by the lobbists for lawyers and corporations.

Sometimes, i think Shakespeare was right. The rest of the time i don't think about lawyers at all.